A conversation with Malcolm Foley – Baptist News Global

Malcolm Foley is a historian whose doctorate work focused on lynchages and the response of the Church to them. The pastor of Mosaic Waco And Special Advisor to the President For the actions and commitment of the campus at the University of Baylor, contributes to conducting the continuous work of the university with our past as slavery and to offer an example of the way in which we could move forward. It was a joy and an encouragement to work with him in these roles. His new book The anti-Greed gospel: why love of money is the root of racism and how the church can create a new path to follow Offers a powerful word on what is and why racism, and it is focused on the continuous problem of racial hierarchies where it has always been – on those it benefits. I am so grateful for the possibility of leading to say his brilliant book and to offer his reflections on where we were and what we are called in the present moment.

Greg Garrett: Malcolm, at the start of your book, you explained your thesis that racism does not mainly concern hatred and ignorance, but on greed. At the start of my research, I discovered the same thing. Could you expose in short what you mean in the book on Mammon and how what you teach in the book could help us to evolve towards real racial justice?

Malcolm Foley

Malcolm Foley: Most of our conversations on breed and racism tend to concern identity, hatred and ignorance, while these are really downstream effects. If we want to know what is really bad in race and racism, we must recognize that they do three things: lie, steal and kill. That is to say that the issues are cosmic.

But historically, the category was born from greed: the desire to accumulate wealth. Thus, the history of the breed and racism of America is only a proxy battle in a cosmic war, whose fighters were named by Christ in the sermon on the mountain.

In Matthew 6:24, Jesus warns us that we cannot serve two masters: we will like either and hate the other or be devoted to one and despise the other. He could have chosen any enemy in front of God, but he chooses “Mammon”, the Aramaic word for “rich”. It suggests if we want the child, the race, die, we must kill what nourishes him: Mammon. It is only then that we will begin to see the justice that we are looking for.

GG: You have studied lynchages and offer a defense of journalist Ida B. Wells as one of the greatest figures in the American struggle for civil rights. Could you tell us about lynchages (Wells said they existed to “keep the terrorized race”) and how they appear in your greatest understanding of racism and greed?

“Cupidity begins the lynching phenomenon, greed and greed it ends.”

MF: When people think of lynching, they generally think of the crowds of angry racist whites killing blacks. All this is true, but that does not reach the very root of the problem. One of the things I support in the book is that greed begins the lynching phenomenon, greed and greed. Violence begins and increases because post-reconstruction, white Americans have sought to tear out power and develop wealth from the hands of those who had spent centuries to be merciless. Cupidity began the phenomenon.

The lynching continued through the spread of lies (such as the story of the “black animal rapist”) which allowed the Americans of the country to largely ignore the terrorizing and systematic suppression of the black communities. Cupidity continued the phenomenon.

Finally, the lynching did not fade because there was a moral revolution in the nation. The lynching has faded because it has become bad for business. At a time when the South became industrialized and sought more capital investment, people around the world were disgusted by what they considered the barbarism of the lynching. The editorials came out of France and even Japan on American lynchings. This embarrassment prevented the whites from the south from publicly mutilating black men in front of thousands, but that did not prevent deeper desires from dominating and exploiting.

GG: In the book, you say that we need a distinctly Christian imagination to break the bonds of race and personal interest. But you and I know and deplore the fact that many Americans who identify themselves as Christians exercise a very different imagination. What should my readers understand about the differences between the Christian convictions on which you are looking for, write and preach and white Christian nationalism?

MF: White Christian nationalism assumes that the state is a boon for the Church. I disagreely disagree. The Christian scriptures as a whole are anti-imperial documents, not in the sense that they are only against particular empires, but in the sense that they oppose the very logic of the Empire.

“Any institution which depends on military power and violence, propaganda and economic exploitation is at the root an enemy of the living God.”

Any institution which depends on military power and violence, propaganda and economic exploitation is at the root an enemy of the living God, like Rome, Greece and Babylon wereAnd so many states in the middle of us today are. No, the Church is something quite different, because we are called to be the outposts of the Kingdom of God who, I support in the book, necessarily commits us to build communities of deep economic solidarity, of Creative anti-violence and prophetic truth.

Part of this truth is to remind the Christian that any commitment to take revenge, domination, exploitation, the amazing of wealth, or to everything that is not manifested in material and spiritual development of his neighbor (also known as love) is an antichrist commitment. A clearly Christian imagination believes that the best way to win your enemy is to love them: nourishing them, dressing them and investing materially in their well-being.

GG: You and I are working for a large Christian university which has chosen to take its racial history seriously. Could you talk a bit about your role as an advisor for the president Linda Livingstone implies and how could the University of Baylor offer movement possibilities on the problems that we centric?

MF: Christian Higher Ed should be filled with institutions with supreme courage. We are the people who stand in the shade of the throne of God and the lamb, which means that we should be a people who repent continuously and continually seeks to surpass themselves in good works. If it is true that Christ took flesh, lived a perfect life, is dead, raised and mounted for our good and in order to bring us in union with him, that requires our everything. All I do is try to make sure it manifests itself in the construction of a fair and equitable institution, an institution where everyone has the resources they need to be able to do their job and everyone understands that they count – infinitely. Sometimes it means that for those who have constantly said they don’t matter, the message they count must be even stronger.

GG: Jemar Tisby said that doing this work has personal consequences, and I suspect that it is also true in your vocation. I am so grateful for your chapter on “the creative kingdom”. Where do you find life and hope right now? What are the writers, artists, communities that you would encourage my readers to meet who could encourage us and shape us as a disciples of Jesus who seek justice?

MF: This is one of the most common questions I get on the book. Are there communities that do these things? Where can I find my hope? Frankly, I did not include examples of communities in the book because this is not that my hope is. I have a wonderful church that I love deeply, but my hope is not in them.

My hope, and what convinces me to continue to deceive the message of the anti-Greed Gospel, is rooted in the fact that it is the work that Christ called us to do. And if Christ called us to do so, he gave us the resources to do so. If he calls us to endure, he will give us the resources to endure. If he calls us to share, he will give us the resources to share.

My hope is in the fact that Christ promised that he will give, to those who defeated, the right to sit with him on his throne as when he overcome, he was seated with his father on his throne. If this is my future, there is no strength, person or power in heaven, on earth or under the earth, which can prevent me from trying to be a lighthouse of the kingdom of God here and now .

Greg Garrett

Greg Garrett is a award -winning professor at Baylor University, where he is the professor of literature and culture at Carole McDaniel Hanks. One of the main voices of the United States on religion and culture, he is the author of 30 books, more recently the novel Bastille day And The Gospel according to James Baldwin: what the great prophet of America can teach us about life, love and identity. He currently administers an important research grant on the racism of the Eula Mae and John Baugh Foundation and finishes a book on racist mythologies for Oxford University Press. Greg is a lay preacher formed in the seminar in the episcopal church and the honorary honorary canon of the American cathedral of the Holy Trinity in Paris. He lives in Austin with his wife, Jeanie, and their two daughters.

More of this series:

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Politics, faith and mission: a conversation with Greg Jarrell

Politics, faith and mission: a conversation with Robert G. Callahan II

Politics, faith and mission: a conversation with Andrea Russell

Politics, faith and mission: a conversation with bishop Michael Curry

Politics, faith and mission: a conversation with Melissa Deckman

Politics, faith and mission: a conversation with Matthew D. Taylor

Politics, faith and mission: a conversation with Nancy French

Politics, faith and mission: a conversation with Robert P. Jones

Politics, faith and mission: a conversation with Brian Kaylor

Politics, faith and mission: a conversation with Colin Allred